For organizations, leadership development is a balancing act: between personalization and scalability, immediate needs and long-term strategy, innovation and stability, and hard skills versus broader capabilities needed to drive success.

Coaching can be the key that makes that balance possible.

Coaching for talent development is most successful when it’s integrated into an organization’s overall leadership development strategy. When it’s purposefully aligned with both individual and organizational outcomes, coaching becomes a powerful catalyst to advance both individual leadership growth and organizational objectives.

The Top Coaching Challenges in Organizations

Our report reveals the 4 biggest challenges that clients say get in the way of effective coaching at their organizations — and our actionable recommendations to address each common pitfall:

1. Misalignment: Organizations often struggle to align coaching with their broader strategic goals, treating it as a standalone effort. When coaching is disconnected from the broader talent development strategy, it diminishes the potential impact.
2. Lack of Focus: Coaching goals that emphasize individual skill development — rather than organizational needs and the leadership outcomes those skills should create — fail to drive organizational results and make real value hard to measure.
3. Rigidity: Coaching programs that don’t evolve and adapt to the changing needs of the organization and its leaders are difficult to scale effectively and to maintain quality and impact.
4. Superficiality: If coaching lacks relevant strategic insight and industry knowledge, it won’t resonate with leaders or tie to their real challenges — resulting in a lack of sustained change or meaningful leadership development.

These coaching challenges highlight the need for organizations to carefully design and integrate coaching into their talent development strategies to ensure alignment, focus, flexibility, and depth.

Proven Leadership Coaching for Talent Development

No matter how your organization approaches leadership development or what coaching challenges you face, you need a reliable, knowledgeable partner. We have extensive experience helping organizations align coaching with their strategic goals to get the most out of their leadership development efforts. Our research-based, relationship-driven approach can help ensure that coaching contributes to both leadership capacity and organizational performance — leading to sustainable growth and success.

Download Report

The post Coaching for Talent Development appeared first on CCL.

Succession planning is no longer a corporate checklist. It’s a dynamic storyline shaping the future of leadership. Join this interactive, communication-focused session to explore insights derived from a comprehensive analysis of 50 years of leadership succession planning, spanning 161 Emmy and Golden Globe–nominated television shows, 190 industry case studies, and 1,000 peer-reviewed articles.

With engaging examples from hit TV shows and a curated list of insights to energize the discussion, you’ll learn the science of anticipating emerging leadership trends and the art of preparing for leadership succession transitions amidst uncertainty.

What You’ll Learn

In this webinar, you’ll:

• Discover groundbreaking research insights into the successes, pitfalls, and emerging trends reshaping leadership succession planning today.
• Understand how cultural storytelling — from HBO’s Succession to Netflix’s Running Point — reflects and influences leadership cultures and succession outcomes.
• Receive evidence-based strategic recommendations to strengthen your organization’s leadership bench in an era of rapid, relentless change.

The post Leadership Succession: Planning Transitions in an Era of Uncertainty appeared first on CCL.

Pete Ronayne, one of our Leadership Solutions Partners, highlights on the Voices of CLO podcast how organizations can tackle the top talent development challenges.

“Talent development shouldn’t be viewed as just a luxury that we can indulge in when things are good and give up on when times are challenging,” Ronayne says on the podcast. “It’s really a strategic imperative that’s even more important during disruption … The best way for organizations to create the future that they want — their prosperity, their people, their purpose — is to develop the people who will lead them into that future.”

Listen to the podcast and download our new report to find out how fostering talent development now can position your organization for success.

Interview Transcript

Ashley St. John:

Welcome to Voices of CLO, Chief Learning Officer’s podcast, featuring voices of top movers and shakers in learning and development. I’m Ashley St. John, CLO’s editor in chief, and today I’m thrilled to welcome our guest Pete Ronayne, a Leadership Solutions Partner with CCL, the Center for Creative Leadership.

Pete works with organizations of every size, shape, and sector to help leaders bring their best, inclusive, innovative, and peak performing selves to all aspects of their lives. He creates innovative and impactful experiential learning programs, including leadership excursions with an eclectic range of partners including art museums, top chefs, farms, a rowing team, a survival school, and even Iceland.

To give a little more background, Pete has been helping leaders navigate change, amplify peak performance, and embrace learning agility for many years. Before joining CCL, he spent 15 years as a dean and faculty member at the Federal Executive Institute in Charlottesville, VA, and he served for many moons as an adjunct professor at the University of Virginia, where he offered a wide range of graduate and undergraduate courses in leadership and organizational development, as well as in international relations and foreign policy. He’s also the co-author of The Toxic Boss Survival Guide: Tactics for Navigating the Wilderness at Work, and is currently working on a book about how individuals, teams, and organizations can burn bright instead of burning out.

So today we’re going to be diving into the importance of talent development. Namely, how in today’s disruptive business environment, organizations that invest in talent now will be better positioned to succeed down the line. We’ll be exploring a new report that CCL has produced, titled Supporting Talent Development: Creating Collective Capability in an Unpredictable Context, which is focused on the current challenges in talent development and how L&D can address them as well as what Pete’s seen among many of CCL’s clients today.

Welcome Pete, thank you so much for joining me today, on a Friday. I’m looking forward to our conversation. I’ll just hop right into it. I’d love to hear a little bit about you, your current role, if you could share a little bit about your career and your background with our listeners.

Pete Ronayne:

Happy to. And pleasure to be with you, Ashley, and great to jump into the time machine. My path actually is, I think in some ways, relevant to the topic we’re gonna talk about. It’s definitely full of serendipity, I think. Way back when, I started as a French major and then I went into international development. I spent some time waiting tables. I got a PhD in international relations. I’ve worked at Barnes & Noble, taught at a university, and then sort of made this shift more into the space that we’re here talking about.

I worked in federal leadership development at a place called the Federal Executive Institute for 15 years, which really kind of got me into this field. It was a delight, being a public servant for 15 years. While I was at the Federal Executive Institute, I learned about a place called the Center for Creative Leadership. We used some of their 360° assessments and they were very much on my radar as a cool place to work, and I got very lucky after my public sector career, I got to join the Center for Creative Leadership as what we call a Leadership Solutions Partner. Sort of like a faculty member at a business school. Been here for over 10 years now. Just a great place to be. Great place to demonstrate kind of a multi-tool role. I get to meet with clients, explore their leadership development needs. Partner with them to develop potential solutions. You know, really get creative, kick it around with them. And then equally if not more fun, get in the classroom, deliver the program, fine tune it, see the impact that it’s having on people, get amazing immediate feedback. So that’s my current role in the Center for Creative Leadership.

Ashley:

Oh, that’s great. Out of curiosity, do you ever use your French major? Do you use it a lot still?

Pete:

No, actually. I shake off the rust periodically, you know. Turn on some show on Netflix and see what I can actually understand. I would say where French shows up most frequently, honestly, is randomly in dreams. You ever have like a dream and you all of a sudden, you’re speaking a foreign language and it’s French? So sadly, that’s when I’m most fluent, when I’m asleep.

Ashley:

Oh, that’s interesting though. Have you traveled to France and been able to use it?

Pete:

Yeah, a couple times. It’s there and it’s latent, but I definitely have these moments where I think, oh, wish I had kind of kept at this, like kept practicing the piano so that it would be stronger.

Ashley:

Oh, that’s cool though. I speak some Spanish, but it’s fallen off over the years, and I’m like, why didn’t I keep it up?

Pete:

I tested myself on Duolingo a little while back just to see, OK, what level would I actually come in at. It was moderately promising. I’ll just leave it at that.

Ashley:

Well, I know a bulk of what we wanted to talk about today, I know that CCL released a report recently called Supporting Talent Development: Creating Collective Capability in an Unpredictable Context. When we do publish this podcast, I’ll definitely share a link to the report online. I was looking through it. It’s very interesting. The findings are very interesting. I’d love to explore a little bit more about the report and CCL’s findings while I have you here. But before we kind of dive into it, can you provide some general context for the report? What was behind the research, who was surveyed and when, and kind of the basics.

Pete:

Talent development, leadership development, that’s the space that we’re in. We have the pleasure of on any given day, working with such a wide range of clients, and I think this report was an opportunity to move with real intention beyond just the anecdotal, and here’s what this person is hearing and this is what this salesperson’s hearing, and this is what these faculty are hearing, and actually have some purposeful conversations with clients who, as we know, are facing some new, maybe unprecedented, challenges in developing their talent.

We’re a couple years after the pandemic, and so obviously that was already changing how work gets done. We’re in the midst of some economic uncertainty right now. We’ve got technological disruption with AI and certainly hear, particularly from newer hires, that there seem to be maybe some different employee expectations, and so it seems like a great opportunity, a perfect opportunity to talk about maybe this perfect storm that’s swirling around talent development.

So last year, CCL surveyed several panels of client-facing experts, clients that we’ve worked with, as an effort to capture their perspectives around what are the most pressing challenges that you’re facing in this talent development space and how could we make sense of that and sort of group and cluster it, which we did. We distilled that down into 6 challenges.

I think what’s particularly cool and fun about the report is it’s capturing client perspectives and organizations from their different stages of talent development. Some of those who are newer to this space and really just having preliminary conversations about how do we go about this, like who do we include and how do we scale, all the way to clients that are far more sophisticated and nuanced and are more thinking about how might we reinvent an already pretty involved ecosystem of learning. So, it’s cool to get behind those challenges.

I think the last thing when we think about talent development, and the report talks about this, like a cool way to think about it is sort of a protective scaffolding that helps an organization support itself and its leaders. Sometimes that’s called organizational resilience. I was thinking just the other day because I got a shot. It’s sort of like a flu shot, really, for leaders in the organization. You want to get it ahead of time. It won’t help you avoid challenges coming up or multiple crises that you’re facing, but you’re inoculated, you’re more ready for it when it comes. So that’s what that report is about, and that’s a little bit of its genesis.

Ashley:

Thank you. You mentioned that the report identifies the 6 most common talent development challenges that you hear from clients, which I’d love to dive into each of them. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s pipeline, focus, overload, adaptability, conversations, and scale.

Pete:

Yep, that’s it. Sadly, there’s no acronym in there, or at least, you know, maybe by the end of our conversation we can figure it out and play a little game of Boggle.

Ashley:

I’m sure we could come up with one. I’ll go in order of the way that they’re actually shared in the CCL report. But I’d love to explore a little bit more about each of them, and we can start with maybe pipeline. What are talent and learning leaders struggling with, so kind of what areas are of greatest concern when it comes to pipeline?

Pete:

The 2 Qs come up right off the bat. They’re struggling with quantity, meaning do we have enough leaders ready for critical roles that need to be filled now or soon. That’s the first Q. The second Q is quality. Are we developing people with the right depth and breadth and the right sort of skills that have them ready to step into and narrow some of these gaps in the pipeline?

It’s interesting. While things like, just the past week even for me with some clients, things like digital fluency and AI understandably grab a ton of headlines. Then there’s also a real sense that alongside artificial intelligence, it’s things like human intelligence and social intelligence that in many ways take on even greater importance now, when you think about curiosity and empathy and communication and influence, those things in a way need to be even more amplified alongside those other skills.

And our work, I would say, just conversations that I have with clients and my colleagues have. Then what are our research and reports tell us and even what outside findings say. A McKinsey report recently noted that 86% of organizations report significant gaps in their leadership pipelines. So, there’s this quantity issue and there’s this quality issue with the pipeline.

Ashley:

This next question is kind of a 2-parter, but what do you see clients with struggles in this area, what are they doing to overcome these challenges or what recommendations does CCL or do you have for bridging the leadership gap?

Pete:

Yeah, so a few things come to mind. I know that a lot of clients talk about new hires as a specific issue, with a lot of concerns often revolving around communication, communication skills, and teamwork. And I think this is a fun issue actually to talk about, Ashley. It’s like, it’s a heck of a time that we’re living in and people are trying to lead in. I mean, you think about, so with that notion of communication and teamwork in mind, you can’t not then think about social media and how that might impact communication and teamwork, particularly in sort of a newer employee pool. More and more reports chronicling just struggles with more isolation. How does that impact communication and teamwork?

I’ve read recently that there are pockets of young people, and it admittedly probably falls out along some socioeconomic lines, but some pockets of young people who have less work experience at a younger age than generations before. So maybe there’s a little bit of less readiness when they hit the workforce, the organizations full time. And of course, the working remotely piece.

One approach or solution to that part is to get that early pipeline simply into leadership development early. That often involves scale, which we’ll talk about a little bit later, but it probably most frequently looks like things that are more asynchronous, a little bit more self-paced. But the idea is to start that scaffolding — talent development is scaffolding and that support that it involves — start that sooner, even if it’s smaller for a large-scale population. So that’s a first part.

If you think about high potentials, that’s a whole other category, and so that’s more about organizations that really want to accelerate and speed the readiness for people into more senior roles. I think from a creativity perspective, I’ve come across some client organizations who are thinking about this more in terms of what they would call acceleration pools. Instead of a traditional succession plan, like I’m identifying Ashley and Pete and Serena, I think that they as individuals could be the next step into the C-suite so we’re going to develop them. Instead of it being that narrow — though there is still room for that — thinking more about developing more breadth and versatile leadership capabilities and a larger pool of people, versus focusing on specific people, specific roles. I think that acceleration pool concept is pretty interesting and probably ends up deepening and certainly broadening the impact of talent development.

Ashley:

Maybe this is a silly question, but how do they identify then the people who are within those pools?

Pete:

Who gets in the pool, who gets in the swimming pool?

Ashley:

Yeah.

Pete:

Right. Yeah, like who needs the floaties … There are diverse approaches to that for sure, in terms of talent assessment and taking a more rigorous review to talent review. There can be the use of different, pretty interesting assessments to capture high potential capability. We talk a lot at the Center for Creative Leadership about differentiating between high performers and high potentials. I think when organizations adopt that mindset and are looking more for the promise of learning agility, the promise of flexibility, the promise of curiosity, etc., those things define high potential. That can be part of the identification process.

What’s really key, and I’ve seen this with some of the more sophisticated clients that I work with and that I learn a ton from, is that you have a culture where identifying who should be in that pool is kind of everyone’s responsibility, or it’s not just HR’s responsibility. You have other managers and leaders with an eye for this talent, and they’re enlisted in those conversations and identifying who they think should be in the pool. It takes more effort, but the payoff tends to be significant.

I think about a program that CCL has been delivering with a large pharma company for over 11 years now. And I’m really lucky to be one of the facilitators for the program. And this particular organization did do all those things that we were talking about. They have other people looking for talent, not just HR. They think in terms of high potentials and not just high performers. And I say that actually because when I show up in the classroom, where I’ll be on Monday for the first session, you can just feel it in the group. You can feel the readiness, you can feel the engagement. Selfishly, it’s less effort for me to kind of win the group and pull them into the learning space. They want to be there. And I think at its root, that is an organization that’s committed to talent development and really identifying those right people for that pool. And it’s a really good example of this pool approach, because a cohort in that program is anywhere from 40 to 50 people, so it’s a good size. That’s far more of a pool than there are 12 people identified from a much more exclusive experience.

Ashley:

So interesting. Thank you. I’ll flow sort of into the next area of the next talent development challenge from the report, which is focus. I’m curious, when the report emphasizes focus as a big challenge, what does that sort of encompass and what are the drivers behind that?

Pete:

This is specifically focused on organizations and talent development and what they think about and what they target. This isn’t about the participants and their ability to focus, we’ll come to that next. But it’s really hard to prioritize development, maintain your commitments to leader development. It’s a cost proposition when there are of course competing business demands. But it’s important, right? This pace of change, growing complexity, etc.

We see clients struggle in a couple areas under focus. I think one of them is, what are some of the more pressing and urgent skills, like the kind of a more immediate gap that they’re seeing show up on a regular basis? What are things that are more strategic that are going to drive future success? And a big part of that is if you think about the sort of classic balcony and dance floor metaphor, sometimes when you’re on the dance floor, things look a certain way. It’s busy, it’s noisy, there’s a lot of movement, and it’s loud. And so that can give you a sense of what the most urgent needs are. However, it’s important sometimes if you get off of that dance floor and you climb up onto the balcony and you look down, you see different patterns, you see different movement, you take it in in a very different way. And that can help organizations see a bit more around, what do they need for future success.

I’m reaching over here because I have this whole pile of stuff. And I was going through this the other day, and it was perfectly timed for our conversation. I had this in one of my baskets, and it’s the periodic table of elements of leadership and management. And the reason I show that to you is, think of how this thing is overwhelming. Think if you’re a leadership development professional, and while it’s cool and it’s fun that someone took time to do this and laminate it, there are 102 elements here. Well, that provides you with no focus, that’s a crazy number of things to have to figure out. We definitely see clients struggle trying to figure out, okay, what are the competencies and behaviors that we need to focus on. And we have methods, we’re in this space of helping them walk through that and define it.

And then I think the other focus issue, which we’ve talked about and also have alluded to, is it’s hard to maintain focus on talent development and leadership development when business conditions change, as we’re experiencing right now. And look, I think finally for some organizations, and we encounter these, it’s even more basic than that. It starts with clarifying, what does leadership even mean? How do we define that? What do we mean by that? We have a particular approach, we talk in terms of what we call direction, alignment, and commitment. And when those things are happening, when those outcomes are there, leadership is happening. But sometimes it’s that fundamental for organizations to start there and then figure out, okay, what from some massive periodic table do we want to narrow down? How are we going to support this? What is the short-term need and what’s longer term for our success? So, those all swirl around focus.

Ashley:

Yeah, I mean, I think that especially with the periodic table, it ties into the next theme, which is overload. When I was looking through the report, I noted to myself, I can only imagine that this is a huge one right now, not just from a work perspective but in general. Just everything feels very overloady right now.

How can organizations keep leadership development effective when people are this busy and overloaded and overwhelmed in some cases?

Pete:

Yeah, and I’d be curious, how does overload show up for you, Ashley? When you think about your work, your day to day, what are some of the hallmarks of that for you?

Ashley:

I would honestly say, I get very deer in headlights. It’s almost like if I feel like I have so many things that I need to tackle, I can freeze and get nothing done. From a leadership perspective too, I think it’s, if you are overloaded with your day-to-day tasks, or for example, I’m in a leadership role but I’m also doing a lot of editorial work for Chief Learning Officer. If I’m overloaded, I’ll go right to those immediate tasks that I can get done, like editing an article, but then all the strategic stuff and everything that I really need …

Pete:

Yeah, you go to the check the box stuff, the thing that gives me a sense of, I got this done, I can move on.

Ashley:

Yeah, but the deer in headlights thing is a big one, just freezing and kind of hiding, like a turtle in a shell.

Pete:

Yeah, it’s not at all uncommon to hear that at all and I appreciate your share, because I think it dovetails with how we think about overload at a couple of levels.

When I was reflecting on this, this might be close to the number one challenge that I hear about, so N of one, N of Pete as CCL faculty member when partnering with clients, and then especially when we collaborate on actual program design. It’s because it’s at the core of this, and in your own answer and experience, I hear a little bit of this. This is another fascinating issue with multiple threads, because the core question here is really one of attention. Attention is the holy grail of learning. We remember and we learn what it is we attend to, where we shine the narrow beam of our attention. And work and life are so busy for people, are sometimes boundary-less, like work seeping into every corner of your household. We have people with different life stages and related responsibilities. We have devices on us almost all the time that are also designed to capture and hold our attention, so we’re in competition with that.

It really creates, I would say, a heck of a paradox where leaders need more development than ever. And we have client organizations talking about this need and these gaps, but those same leaders that they want to develop will self-report, like, “I don’t feel like I have the wherewithal for this. I’m not sure I have the bandwidth.” And you can look at any number of different reports, Ashley, and you’ll easily get numbers like 70 to 80% of leaders feeling sort of just overwhelmed by workload. To your example, the strategic stuff kind of goes away. It’s also easy for the learning stuff to go away, developmental activities.

And lastly, I think we also know that people that are flirting with burnout are far less likely to learn. They’re way less likely to be curious, very difficult to be a good collaborator when you’re even just approaching burnout, you’re not going to deal with change really well. And how likely are you when you’re in that space to sustain any positive behavior change? Which that’s what leader development is all about. It’s really important to name that and really sort of design and approach talent development around it.

Ashley:

Flowing into the next one, adaptability. I think it’s a question so many are struggling with right now, and CCL’s report sums it up really perfectly. We want to be ready for the future, but we don’t know how to prepare for what we can’t predict. I think that’s the big question right now. What are the specific difficulties you are seeing leaders cope with today?

Pete:

Yeah, and I think even prior to flow into adaptability, just another word on overload, if you don’t mind?

Ashley:

Oh, yes.

Pete:

Because I think there’s a real connection here, because it’s hard to get to either individual adaptability or organizational adaptability without addressing that overload piece. And so it’s one thing to diagnose it, which I think a lot of people can do, but when we think about that and we think about leader development, I know for sure the Center for Creative Leadership, we think about it in very holistic and very human terms about leader development.

Our experience tells us clearly that when programs, when talent development is actually built on a foundation of wellbeing, both yours as the participant but also others who you are responsible for, when we create conditions for learners, for leaders to what we like to say, burn bright instead of burning out, it sets them up for leader development at a much higher level of success. We talk about things like being intentional about your health and recharge, and that should be part of programs. We equip people with tactics for that. You throw in things like understanding cognitive overload, how much we can keep in our minds in short-term memory, how important things like spaced learning are, so people have reflection and processing time. Those things matter hugely. It’s not just about content and warehouses of content. It’s thinking about, how can we really intentionally craft these experiences with actual human beings and how they learn and how they bring their best selves in mind — bring that to the actual development experience.

And so from there, getting into the adaptability piece. It’s hard to be thinking about the future and adapt to it if you don’t have the wherewithal and the focus and the energy. The quote that you mentioned, this notion that we want to be ready for the future, but we don’t know how to prepare for something we can’t predict. I think CCL right now, pretty thoughtfully, is describing this as what we call the polycrisis. I’ve heard others call it like a perma-crisis. It’s basically this notion that we’re sitting at, increasingly at this confluence of multiple challenges, multiple crises at any time, at any given moment. And in many ways, it’s kind of the next evolution of VUCA, which has been around for a long time, since the late ’80s. Volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. I think the adaptability challenge speaks to that core dilemma that organizations are facing.

How do we develop leaders for a future we can’t predict? What we know and what our research into polycrisis tells us is, if you do work on things like complex problem solving, continue to work on improving collaboration and relationships, fine-tuning leaders’ abilities to have a future orientation, those sorts of things, you’re setting them up with the adaptability to deal with some of that unpredictability and that increasing likeliness of dealing with the polycrisis.

Ashley:

This is an aside, but I did not realize that VUCA had been around since the ’80s.

Pete:

Yes, so the source code of VUCA was actually at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. It was at the tail end of the Cold War, so that’s what we’re talking about, late ’80s, early ’90s. And some big thinkers in the Army were thinking, all right, with this adversary, the Soviet Union, going away, what’s this new world going to look like? How do we define it? And they came up with VUCA to describe that world. Everyone’s borrowed it since then and it seems still pretty relevant and applicable.

Ashley:

Apparently yeah, some things don’t change.

Pete:

VUCA seems to be a constant in some way.

Ashley:

Chaos remains constant. Continuing on with the adaptability, the report suggests that organizations must adapt how they’re adapting. What can that look like in practice? What should they be focusing on?

Pete:

Yeah, this is a favorite. I love this concept that I learned at the Center for Creative Leadership. By the way, a great part of being at an organization like this, and I’m sure at yours, is all the learning that we get ourselves. And so, it really is all about shifting from thinking mostly about the skills in leadership development and focusing also on capacity. It’s 2 things. And specifically at CCL, we talk about horizontal development and vertical development. Horizontal development is, we’re adding more skills. We’re going to help Ashley with active listening. We’re going to give you a couple different ways of influencing up the chain of command. We’re going to equip you with a new feedback model.

Essentially, think of a glass and you’re that glass, your leadership is that glass, and we’re going to pour more content into the glass. That’s important, absolutely, horizontal development. Pairing it with vertical development is really the sort of next stage in thinking and being adaptable. Vertical development is, what if we actually made the glass that is your leadership bigger. It’s more capacity, it’s more capacity to think differently, to see with more depth, to perspective take, to have system views, that sort of thing.

And I was thinking about this too, and it was sparked by 2 things. I heard one observer talk about this, Ashley, in baseball terms. I don’t know, are you a baseball fan at all? Do you pay attention to the game?

Ashley:

I mostly just go for the hot dogs, but I understand the rules.

Pete:

Hey, that’s an important part of our wellbeing, the hot dogs. but you get the basics of the game?

Ashley:

Yep.

Pete:

And for anyone listening, even if you’re not a baseball fan, you probably have a sense that on every baseball team there’s someone who runs the day-to-day of the team in the game and that’s the manager. Pretty important, it’s a key leadership role in baseball. And this report pointed out, and I just love this, it’s stuck with me ever since. That historically, a disproportionate number of managers and Major League Baseball teams came from a particular playing position. They were mostly players before and a disproportionate number were in a particular playing role, one position, and that position is catcher. So historically, 22% of major league baseball managers have been catchers. In 2015, it was 40% of managers, and it’s even 30% today.

And if you think about it, there’s usually only 2 catchers on a baseball team. And then you have a ton of outfielders and a ton of infielders and a whole fleet of pitchers. Why is that? It’s sort of a vertical development thing, because think about the perspective. The catcher is the only one looking this direction. They see the whole game, they see all of the other players, they see all of them. They have the system view. They probably have the most vertical development over their careers. And so, this article talked about how through your leadership development efforts, how through your talent development, do you kind of develop the catcher perspective in more people? It’s not just about their skills, it’s about that vantage point.

And if we can just rip from headlines, so we have a new pope, all the excitement and interest about the unanticipated American pope. Think about it. Pope Leo, if you think about the vertical development that he has experienced. He was a math major, he was a missionary, he was a parish priest, a seminary teacher. He’s American and Peruvian. He was the head of the Augustinian Order, he was a bishop, and then the Vatican leader responsible for bishops. And by the way, he’s a baseball fan too.

Ashley:

Oh, really?

Pete:

So, throw that in the mix. But think about that vertical development, how of course he was developing different skills along the way, but think about the vantage point, the perspective taking, the system thinking, the capacity to think in bigger and different ways that all of those different roles and responsibilities afforded. And some of them were lateral and some of them were vertical moves, for sure. But nonetheless, that creates the kind of adaptability to address and lead in a world that’s unpredictable.

Ashley:

I think you have a talent for tying these big concepts to current headlines and tangible things like baseball. It’s a talent, it makes it make sense to me.

Pete:

Well, and to make it even more tangible, because people listening think okay, that’s great, but I’m not a pope and I’m not going to make my way through the Vatican leadership, or I’m not a baseball player. But you can bring that same intention around adaptability and vertical development into talent development. Like for us, we often will do it with simulations. That puts you into a different kind of perspective in a different kind of role. We do it through what we call organizational excursions, just getting out of the classroom, Ashley, and going to meet with and talk with leaders in different organizations in totally different fields.

One that is particularly enjoyable, you just see participants take to it. You go out to dinner, not at all uncommon, right? You’re in a program, and one evening the group wants to go out for dinner, great. But what we do is in advance, we arrange it so that it’s not just dinner, but we’re going to have a conversation with the chef and the owner at that restaurant, and they’re going to talk about leadership in their world and engagement and keeping people motivated and customer centricity, whatever. It’s a totally different field but through that lens and through that conversation, you absolutely elevate people’s vertical thinking. We can do a lot of skill building in the classroom, but then when we get out, you get that vertical development, you get that perspective taking. We can amplify that even more with things like learning how to row with a world-class team or working alongside a pit crew or a survival school or horse trainers, you name it. So that’s a way that you can do it, but at work you can do it too through rotations and coaching and merging programmatic learning and experience.

We care about the 70-20-10, CCL pioneered that. 70% of learning happens through challenging experiences and assignments. If you craft that, one of our clients does an amazing job with action learning, Ashley, and that action learning provides them an opportunity to practice the new skills they’ve been working on, the horizontal development, while gaining vertical development by being placed onto action learning teams with challenges that are completely outside their area. They purposely assign people to problem solve in some part of the company that is not at all where they work, they don’t know anything about it. And they walk out of that with a much more enhanced system view, system perspective, empathy for other parts of the organization, their development is vertically enhanced. Very cool, very fun.

Ashley:

Yeah. I’ll pivot a little bit into the next challenge.

Pete:

I know I get all fired up about vertical development.

Ashley:

It’s interesting. No, I love it and I’m glad that we have it all recorded in the podcast. The next challenge is conversations. And around this one, I was curious if you could provide a little bit more context. What is lacking in today’s conversations and communications?

Pete:

I remember myself, if I’m fully honest, when I first learned of our work and focus in the conversation space, and I kind of had my own quizzical reaction and I thought, that seems kind of, I don’t know, simple, which I think maybe people have that reaction at first. I get how it might seem a little bit almost pedestrian at first, but then you quickly realize that it is not pedestrian, it’s actually pivotal. It’s actually profound how important the conversations angle is to talent development. Conversations in leadership development, conversations really are the overlooked building block of leadership. I mean, conversations hide in plain sight, but oftentimes we just rely on rituals and habits and routines in terms of how we approach them.

I think at root, what’s most lacking, to your question is, there’s a bit of an imbalance in what we might call the task-relationship dynamic. And this is exacerbated probably more and more by more and more virtual work teams. It’s easy for work conversations, especially when you’re virtual and remote, to very quickly just get down to business. We have things to talk about, we have things to get done, let’s talk about those. And throw in the fact that because so many more of us are virtual, we don’t have the serendipitous hallway conversations, where you just run into somebody and can meaningfully connect with them. And where there are, things are more about personal connection and feelings and challenges. I mean, it’s very difficult to have a serendipitous hallway conversation on Zoom. I mean, I don’t log on Zoom and hang around hoping someone will come by and have a chat.

I think that’s a big part of it, and there are significant numbers of managers, I think even our research shows that over 60% of managers talk about, there’s just less confidence in their ability to have difficult or connecting or challenging conversations in a virtual environment. That’s definitely exacerbating it.

Ashley:

I believe CCL is completely remote, correct? Internally?

Pete:

No, we’re not.

Ashley:

Oh, no, you have the office. That’s right. I was getting confused. Your office is in the Greensboro area, correct?

Pete:

We have Greensboro, Colorado Springs, San Diego, Singapore, and Brussels, actually, and people in those spaces and a significant remote workforce. So, look, we are learning and exploring and figuring this out right alongside every other organization.

Ashley:

Obviously, we were in person for many years, and then in 2020 we went fully virtual, and we are still fully virtual, and that’s one of the things that I definitely struggle with, that I miss is those serendipitous hallway conversations, but also just popping over to someone’s desk and being like, “Let’s chat about this really quickly.” It’s like you have to set up a meeting.

Pete:

Or do the little Teams thing and hope someone’s there to answer, but it’s highly unlikely.

Ashley:

It’s tricky.

Pete:

I’m with you. And so we talk openly about that, and we really do, we have some marvelous research-based approaches to addressing it. We call it Better Conversations Every Day. And again, it’s so simple in its conception and even in its description. And look, it’s not about amazing life-changing conversations every moment. It’s just, what if you had slightly better conversations every day? And when you focus on and we create opportunities for people to practice, really practice listening to understand? Remember our overload conversation. We’re so pulled in different directions and constantly distracted, etc., when you really bring intention to your listening, what a game changer that is. When you can shift from being a problem solver for your team into question mode and asking open-ended powerful questions like, how might someone else see that differently? And what if you had a magic wand, what would you do? Or how would your 8-year-old self see this issue, Ashley, or how would your 80-year-old? It changes the dynamic and becomes one of exploration and connection.

And remarkably, when people engage in deeper conversations, especially when people are overloaded and stressed, when you lace together these skills, you create what we’ll call a virtuous cycle where people are showing up with more vulnerability, which builds more trust. And that trust allows for more vulnerability, builds more connection, builds more belonging. And all of that ultimately, it’s proven just to fuel better performance — leader performance, team performance, organizational performance.

Ashley:

Yeah. Well, I think you flowed right into a couple my additional questions about conversations, which were, how can people managers improve, and what are the outcomes of these deeper conversations? Is there anything else you wanted to add around that theme before we move into scale, the final one?

Pete:

Yeah. There was a story, I remember working actually with a particular healthcare leader and group during COVID. And I would say kudos to them, they maintained a commitment to leader development, and we had to do a major shift to online. And she reported, basically, I’m kind of paraphrasing that, “what really kept our team together and our performance moving and accelerating through that, wasn’t that we had more resources or that we had a budgetary boon, etc. It was this opportunity that CCL created for us to have better conversations. And in that case, better conversations about our concerns, our real challenges, and the hopes we had during this difficult time.” And then it was the foundation of those conversations that built the connection, the resilience, the momentum that they needed to get through the crisis. So again, while conversation can seem pedestrian, it’s not, it’s really profound.

Ashley:

Absolutely. The final challenge that’s outlined in the report, which I think is a big one, and I think the report even mentions that at many organizations this can be the biggest challenge of them all, is scale. I’m going to read a little piece of CCL’s report.

It detailed how many organizations have excellent pockets of development with initiatives for specific groups like executives, emerging leaders, those who are deemed hi-pos, or select teams. But this can create a piecemeal or patchwork approach, which fosters inconsistencies across the broader leadership ranks, and gaps in knowledge and values across teams, and divisions that can hinder decision making. Sorry, that took me a minute. What recommendations do you have for organizations to create a more unified development strategy?

Pete:

Yeah, it’s a good one. The scale comes up a ton for sure, and in many ways, it really does flow naturally from both pipeline and focus. This idea of, how do we create consistent, high quality development opportunities across an organization. And when we talk about across an organization, any given week, CCL might be working with a 200-person organization, that’s one scale, but it matters to them. We might be working with a 20,000-person organization or larger.

If you think back to focus, I think a big part of scale does start there with figuring out, what’s going to be our common leadership language in our framework. So doing the discovery that requires, figuring out the actual capabilities, the language that we want to use, the competencies and behaviors we want to anchor around, so that then we can be consistent with those across levels. I find a lot of programs are really effective when they are cross level and you do have these basics that everyone covers and touches on, even though they might customize it differently for a group of new hires versus the C-suite, but they still have these core sort of leadership values and behaviors that everyone needs to live into. I think that’s an important part of scale, that common language and consistency. It’s fun, honestly, and very rewarding when you work with an organization and you’ve worked with them for a couple of years and you see that. You hear the consistent language, that shared leadership lexicon across levels. It’s amazing and you can feel the momentum and impact that has.

I think second, this is no surprise, but scaling is often also about being real intentional about a blended approach. The reality is, and I know that you’re interested also in potential hurdles to this, cost of course. And in an ideal world, everybody gets together for powerful face-to-face programs and it’s transformative. That’s not a reality. It’s not now, it wasn’t before either. So I think we see great impact with clients who partner to create leadership learning ecosystems that include self-directed programs, like we have one called Frontline Leader Impact. So that is generally targeted at a particular leader level, but shared leadership lexicon and foundational understanding. We have things like what we call our Passport program, which will give you access to our whole library, but it’s also customizable. There’s train the trainer. And you can do that alongside sending some participants maybe to an open enrollment program someplace, maybe CCL.

And where we’ve seen a lot of this scaling work very well is let’s say, Ashley, you and some colleagues attend one of our open enrollment programs. You come back, you report to your colleagues about the impact, about what really worked. And often you say, “We need this for more people.” Then that’s the shift into, what would a custom learning journey look like for a director level or a VP level high potential audience? You’re addressing all of the levels, but it’s for sure is not a one size fits all, and cost is always in mind.

Ashley:

Yeah. In addition to cost, where else do you see clients sort of running into hurdles or challenges?

Pete:

I think one big one, I was in a conversation just earlier this week that ultimately kind of centered around this, which is thinking that any learning platform that has a lot of stuff is the solution. You have to think about more than just warehouses of content. And I see clients run into that, where they rush into something that involved volume and a lot of content, but it lacked any ability for curation, like consultation, collaboration with that partner to really make it fit what their learners need and what learners and users will actually do in that client’s context. Then you end up with low adoption, you paid a ton of money for this warehouse of information that no one’s using. I definitely see people run into that.

And then I think a second part is relying on or putting too much of a burden on managers to drive development and development conversations without actually first equipping them with the skills that they need, which leads to its own inconsistency. And also, to your point, if I don’t feel comfortable doing that, I’m going to focus on the things that I’m good at and I can get these things done. And your development, I’m going to keep pushing off and pushing off because it’s just not my comfort zone. I think those 2 pieces are additional hurdles, for sure.

Ashley:

Yeah, that completely makes sense. In this area of scaling, how do you think that organizations can start to take concrete action or what would be next steps for organizations where this is something they’re definitely coping with?

Pete:

Yeah, so it’s certainly a strong point of view from the Center for Creative Leadership because this is what we do when we think about it. But first off, just viewing leadership development and talent development as a core business process, and that it’s integrated and that it’s systematic, just like you would with your financial reporting or accounting or product development. Not like this random collection of disconnected programs, that doesn’t help at all. Sort of rationalizing what you’re doing and where you want it to go, and being really intentional about, how are we blending like nano offerings, little, short, bite-size things, all the way through micro, mini, and major learning journeys all the way through. But that you’re understanding what’s happening in all of those and you’re thinking through, what would it look like if Ashley were a new hire and started in this program and then 3 years later, she’s ready for the mid-level talent program? Is there rationalization? Is there flow? Is there connection but not duplication? Those sorts of things, that really helps you get at impactful scale.

Ashley:

With everything we’ve discussed …

Pete:

It’s a lot. You’re very patient.

Ashley:

It’s a lot.

Pete:

I get worked up and …

Ashley:

Oh no, I think it’s great. I love to hear your insights around all of these. Kind of to sum up, I think the big stressor behind this, or the big thing that we want to emphasize, is obviously the importance of talent development more than ever before in positioning organizations for success. I’m curious, are there inherent challenges you see among talent development teams in taking kind of a holistic approach to preparing themselves for the future? Are there issues with leadership buy-in when finances are tight? Or what do you see as being hurdles?

Pete:

I’m trying to think if I call it a hurdle. I was trying to think of another word for it, but look, I would just say the press of AI right now and the push for what we need, that technical skill and that integration, that can be a hurdle or it can at least on the surface seem like it’s something needs to replace more leadership development, that as we talked about before, they really need to go hand in hand. That artificial intelligence is best leveraged with human intelligence and social intelligence. I think that’s an inherent challenge that can get in the way of a more holistic approach.

You can have pockets of an organization that are just more vocal or better at asking for and promoting themselves for development. And I think similar to that, there’s a tendency for that high potential focus or that immediate succession focus, and that is a little bit narrow, and it certainly moves you away from the more holistic approach, so you have that broader pool that’s ready.

Now when you talk about leadership buy-in and look, finances are tight. Like you said, the future of the economy is uncertain. And there was Gartner research that shows that, and we know this, learning and development budgets are usually the first to be cut, along with travel during downturns. But actually, it diminishes your ability to be ready when things bounce back. There is evidence that organizations that maintain or even increase, believe it or not, their investment in talent development during difficult times, when things bounce back, they actually outperform their peers.

I think 2 things for me, it’s sort of like your network when you think about individual networks, and there’s always the advice. You need to build the network now that you need then, or sort of like that flu shot I mentioned before, getting a flu shot after you already got the flu, not super helpful, but getting it before, doing talent development before, positions you to get through that crisis more effectively and be ready to bounce forward once you’re through it.

And I’m always reminded, you’ve probably heard this story, it’s so old, but it still seems relevant to me. The sort of apocryphal story when a boss says, ‘Well, what if we invest in all this leadership development for our people and then they just leave?’ And their HR counterpart says, ‘Well, what if we don’t invest in them and they stay?’

Ashley:

So true.

Pete:

You know? I mean, it’s sort of thinking about it that way. I think there are creative ways to win buy-in as well. I’ve had the pleasure of being involved in nano-journeys for the C-suite. We’re going to give you this little micro, microburst and taste of what’s going to be in this program and to enlist you as a champion. I love when clients invite C-level leaders and even just below to kick programs off, to come to lunch-and-learns, whether it’s virtual or face-to-face. One of the clients I get to work with, they do a fantastic job with what they call leaders as teachers. There’s a dedicated afternoon where a series of leaders come in and they rotate through these panel conversations, and it adds an organizational level, it adds some vertical development to it, but it also enlists senior leadership in supporting this. It enrolls them in the program. They get firsthand input and feedback from participants. I think those are some fun and creative ways to get over those hurdles and, like you said, get leadership buy-in.

Ashley:

Yeah, absolutely. I wanted to wrap up with one final question, and that’s, what’s the number one takeaway that you would want people to leave this podcast conversation with?

Pete:

Hopefully they leave it being reminded that leadership development and talent development can be fun. It can be engaging, etc., and multidisciplinary, but in particular, that talent development shouldn’t be viewed as just a luxury that we can indulge in when things are good and give up on it when times are challenging. It’s really a strategic imperative that’s even more important during disruption, polycrisis, VUCA, etc. So, developing people now to meet those challenges, but also for the future.

Way back when, Peter Drucker famously said, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” And so the best way for organizations to create the future that they want — their prosperity, their people, their purpose — is to develop the people who will lead them into that future that they create. So that’s what I’d leave us with.

Ashley:

I think that’s fantastic. And just a big thank you for hopping on with me, especially on a Friday.

Pete:

Oh, my pleasure. I’ve been looking forward to it. I mean, geez, you give me a microphone, you see what happens.

Ashley:

Oh, no, I think it’s wonderful and I’m so glad we had the chance to catch up today and spend some time together discussing this. Thank you.

Pete:

My pleasure. Yep, anytime.

Ready to Take the Next Step?

Learn the 6 most common talent development challenges we hear from our clients, and the ways that we’re partnering with organizations to overcome them, by downloading our talent development challenge report. 

The post Advice for Addressing Today’s Top Talent Development Challenges appeared first on CCL.

• PODCAST

Lead With That: Expanding Capabilities Through Talent Development

In this episode of Lead With That, Ren and Allison explore the importance of talent development as leaders navigate challenges and prepare their organizations for the future. Developing talent is more than just education and training, especially in the context of today’s ever-changing and complex world. It involves identifying the mindsets, skills, and behaviors that will build capabilities and push your organization forward. By layering talent development with adaptability and a culture of learning, leaders can thrive through the unexpected and build strong, future-focused teams. Ren and Allison discuss what our research can teach leaders about talent development, and lead with that.

Read our report on the most common talent development challenges leaders face and actionable insights to address them.

Listen to the Podcast

In this episode, Ren and Allison discuss the importance of talent development for organizations in today’s environment of constant change and uncertainty. While many view talent development as simply providing education and training, it requires a more strategic approach that embeds a learning culture and increases capabilities across organizations. Ren and Allison discuss what our research can help leaders understand about talent development, and lead with that.

Learn More

Interview Transcript

Intro:

Welcome back to CCL’s podcast, Lead With That, where we talk current events and pop culture to look at where leadership is happening and what’s happening with leadership.

Today, we’re diving deep into the human side of strategy, talent development. It’s more than just training programs and upskilling checklists, it’s about building collective capability in a world that’s anything but predictable. We’re leaning on fresh insights from the Center for Creative Leadership and our new research, Supporting Talent Development: Creating Collective Capability in an Unpredictable Context.

Spoiler alert, traditional approaches aren’t cutting it. In today’s reality where volatility is the norm and certainty is a luxury, organizations must shift from individual-centric development, to building systems of shared learning and adaptability. Think less “star performer,” more “resilient team.”

In this episode, we’ll unpack the research’s key takeaways, explore why context is the new curriculum, and share stories from leaders re-imagining what it means to grow talent, or those who are just stuck in the old ways. And whether you’re in HR, a team lead, or just someone who believes people are the real edge, this one might just be for you.

Ren:

So let’s get into it. Welcome back everyone. I’m Ren Washington, and as usual, I’m joined with Allison Barr. Allison, what’s your best talent development perspective? If you were leading an organization and you were like, “Hey, I got to develop talent,” or you’re on a team, like what’s the number 1 thing that you would do?

Allison:

Well, I have 2 answers depending on, like you said, if I was an organizational-level leader or a team / function leader. So if I was an executive or a more senior leader, I would start by identifying leadership competencies that are necessary for success in alignment with the business goals. That’s simplified, of course, I know it’s easier said than done.

And I think if I were a team leader or a function leader or somewhere in the middle of management, gosh. I was thinking about this before we started, and it’s important to note that those mid-level managers play a pretty critical role in talent and development. They sit in the middle, right, so they’re a bridge between strategic goals and frontline execution. So I think, from a mid-level manager perspective, the first thing I would do is identify the strengths and development areas of my team. That’s the first thing, there’s a lot more to say of course, but that’s the first thing I would do. What about you?

Ren:

Yeah, I think that makes plenty of sense, and I was thinking about this, and not unlike in the research that we’re going to be going through today, there’s a conversation I think that’s undergirding all of it, and we’ll talk a little bit around the end. But this idea of like, really focus on an organization’s unique context. And I think talent development starts with identifying internally, for myself, my team, your organization, like who we are, what we are, and how close we can get talent to that. And so I don’t think there’s a wrong answer here, but I think it’s interesting to start to explore this idea of talent development.

I think you bring up an interesting point, like middle managers, you play an important role, but you don’t really get to create, necessarily, the massive policies that guide this kind of talent development. And so I think that’s what I’m looking forward to looking at today. There’s kind of 6 points in our research. Maybe we’ll get through all of them. I can imagine just kind of going through them as we go.

But ultimately, I think the challenge in talent development is really twofold. And I think we talk about this with our clients, Allison, a lot of times. It’s like first, figuring out the skills, the behaviors, and the mindsets that matter the most for the organization, and then supporting the learning of those things across the organization. So sometimes I think people identify it, but then they don’t support it. And I think that’s an interesting challenge.

Allison:

Yeah. And I’m interested to talk about some of those challenges too, because the culture has to support the kind of behaviors that are needed to have a strong talent development strategy and execution.

I’m curious, Ren, have you ever had a manager who was really, really good at talent development, or not good? And what did they do?

Ren:

Yeah, interesting. Yeah, I don’t think anyone’s really popping up for me right now. And I don’t know if that’s just a space that I am in my career, because I think we were like go, go, go. And it’s funny, I’ll talk to people or reflect on going to a workspace, and one of the characteristics is like, find a job where they care about developing you. And I think that’s an interesting frame, because people could care about developing you, but then they just don’t have the time to develop you, which is something I think we need to subvert.

But I think generally, have I had a really good one? I think the managers who … yes, actually, okay, just think of one. One of our leaders in our organization, I found this person to be really always transparent, clear with me, tells me things even if I may not like them. And then I think one of the ways that honed in my development, was less like maybe structures or opportunities, but helping me get a little bit more focused on my skill set. I just wanted to kind of do things, and he just said, “Yeah, you’re kind of scattershot though, let’s aim more of your energies in a singular place.” And so I think maybe that was a manager who made a difference on me, from a talent development standpoint, kind of helping hone my focus, maybe. I don’t know if that works.

Allison:

Yeah, yeah, that works. And it’s curious too, you mentioned, I’m paraphrasing what you said, the impact that it has on an organization, which I’m sure we’ll get into. But I was looking at, not only our research, but some research from McKinsey and Deloitte and some other folks out there as well, around current workplace desires of employees based on generation.

And what’s really interesting is that across 5 generations, what those generations have in common in terms of what they want from their workplace is career growth and development. So I thought that was interesting. And we found, in our research, that 41% of employees who move to a different organization said that they left because they weren’t getting professional development. So I thought that was interesting.

Ren:

Yeah. And what an interesting bridge I think, to maybe the first bit of our research, when we’re helping organizations think about talent development differently. And we’re kind of outlining, if you could do these 6 steps, you’re going to be better positioned for it. And one of the tensions I think you just highlighted is, like the number one step in our research, is pipeline.

Allison:

Yeah.

Ren:

And how do we bridge the leadership gap, or what we would consider the shortfall between current capabilities and forecasted leadership needs? And I think organizations have, maybe not unlike people in our relationships and stuff, Allison. It’s like we have this, like, we take things for granted.

Allison:

Yeah.

Ren:

And we don’t look at the pipeline and be thinking of like, people leave organizations because they’re not being developed. And, oh, by the way, organization, if you develop people, you’ll be able to maintain your success because knowledge stays in the institution. And so I think that idea of like, what is in our pipeline from a talent development standpoint, externally and internally? Can we —

Allison:

Yeah.

Ren:

Fill in roles or stay as effective if people leave the organization?

Allison:

Right. And yeah, you think about, too, any employee could leave at any given time, for various reasons, it could have nothing to do with not being pleased with their workplace environment. It could be anything, right, any employee could leave tomorrow. And so when an organization isn’t focused on pipeline, it creates, of course, a lot more work for other folks, as an organization, work to fill those roles. But something you said made me also think about culture too, loosely of course, when it comes to pipeline.

The workplace culture needs to support continuous learning, and it needs to support empowering and enabling people to take calculated risks and grow and take opportunities. And I think sometimes at workplaces, leaders press the easy button. And instead of developing talent now, even though they might not need to utilize those skill sets right now, they press the easy button and create a hero culture and rely on the people who can do X, Y, Z versus developing everybody, even though they might not need to be deployed for said skill set right now. So it’s an interesting mindset shift I think that some leaders, not all, will have to make, given some of the external variables that we know are impacting workplaces right now.

Ren:

Well, it reminds me of present bias, and I think what I’m kind of tracking with you is saying is like, why should I develop this person when I don’t need them in the role? And an example that’s just recently, that I think is really interesting, I don’t watch tons of basketball, and these days sports is so far away from my life just because of everything else in my life. But there was a time where I would care a lot more, but I don’t know if you know much about, do you watch a lot of basketball, Allison?

Allison:

Basketball, no.

Ren:

Basketball, yes.

Allison:

No.

Ren:

Well, the New York Knicks, do you know who the New York Knicks are?

Allison:

Yes, I know who the Knicks are, yes.

Ren:

Okay, just making sure everyone out there knows who the Knicks are, basketball team, right from, you guessed it, the New York. And their coach, this long-standing coach, he led them to their best season in a long time, their best stretch of play this century, which sounds fun, but it’s like in the past 25 years. He won a playoff series in 3 consecutive seasons, advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals this year for the first time in 25 years. And they fired him. And they fired him because, they publicize this idea of like, we are trying to win a championship now. And it’s such an interesting idea, a weird kind of sensemaking that the organization does, like we’re trying to win a championship now, he didn’t win a championship, so we’re going to let him go. We’re looking for someone to give us more energy to get us over that hump.

Allison:

Yeah.

Ren:

And it’s like, if you look at the record, these things build, he’s trying to build this idea. So it’s almost like a short-sighted pipeline, because the success they’re having now isn’t because of a magic pill they took this year, it’s like over the past 4 years of development.

Allison:

Right.

Ren:

And so I think organizations that are able to keep that idea, like, I will need this later, or this is building to something, versus, I’m not going to do it, or worse yet, you’re not winning as much as we need you today, so you’re out of here.

Allison:

Right.

Ren:

I don’t know, it’s such an interesting idea.

Allison:

Yeah. And there’s a time and a place, right. It can make sense, but it can also hurt you in the long run. And are you ready for me to just stick with sports analogies for a second? I’m sorry to our listeners who don’t like sports. I’m sorry about it.

Ren:

Please. Yeah. It’s okay, everybody.

Allison:

Ren, do you know who the Pittsburgh Steelers are?

Ren:

I do know who the Pittsburgh Steelers are.

Allison:

So I grew up in Pittsburgh, and by blood I am required to be a Steelers fan, though, with full transparency, I don’t really care, I could care less. But the Pittsburgh Steelers are bringing on Aaron Rodgers, I don’t know if you saw that.

Ren:

I did not.

Allison:

Aaron Rodgers, who’s, in football years, considered to be outside of his prime.

Ren:

Geriatric. 

Allison:

Yes.

Ren:

Yes.

Allison:

Outside of his prime. People in Pittsburgh are up in arms about it, because, if I can make the analogy here, or make a connection, they just did not create a pipeline from Ben Roethlisberger, who won, I don’t even know, however many Super Bowls, and went to the playoffs pretty much I think every year that he was on the roster. They did not develop, they didn’t — again, I’m sorry to my Steelers fans, because I’m sharing what I know, which is very minimal — they didn’t backfill, they didn’t develop. So it’s a bit of a reach, but it’s the same concept. If your star player, if your top performers, your top 3 performers on your team all left tomorrow, what would your team look like? And it’s something to consider.

Ren:

Yeah.

Allison:

It is, like people don’t always love sports analogies, but it is the same thing. If your star people left tomorrow, how much are you relying on them, number 1? Are you overworking them, and what’s your pipeline look like? Would you be shooting yourself in the foot if they all left tomorrow?

Ren:

Yeah, I think that that’s exactly the point. And yeah, I know, probably some Steelers fans … I would love to watch you debate someone about Steelers football, Allison, that’d be super fun.

Allison:

Listen.

Ren:

New podcast idea.

Allison:

I won the fantasy football championship this year, I’m just saying.

Ren:

You know what? I hung up my spurs after winning 2 in a row and I’m like, I don’t think I’m ever going to come back, I get to end up on top. And football is an interesting thing about pipeline, and I think just like the experience that goes on there. But something that you said that I think is the point, is that anyone on any team, if you’re not prepared for your best people to leave, if you couldn’t pick up the slack, then maybe you’re missing something. And I think there’s a reality, like the organization will do what it did without you when you leave again.

Allison:

Right.

Ren:

It was working before you got there, it will work afterwards.

Allison:

Right.

Ren:

And so maybe I think that’s, too, something where we can lose sight of developing talent, is that we just know the truth that, in like your example, I’m not going to develop talent because I don’t need it today. And it might hurt when someone leaves, it might sting, I might say to people, in an all staff, “We should develop talent different.” But I think this whole purpose of our research is, how do you start to create a culture of that? Because if we don’t have the attitude to sort of do that, then we’ll just replay the pain.

Allison:

Right.

Ren:

And yeah, you sort of see that in some of the things there, but that’s something that I … I think you hit the nail on the head, it’s like, just how can you prepare yourself, insulate yourself, if your top 5 performers leave tomorrow? Will that crater you? If it will, then you need to guard yourself.

Allison:

Yeah. And just to highlight your point even more, building a talent pool now with needed skills across however large your team is, across the team, and preparing for what obstacles we know are going to come down the pipe, it’s essential. It’s absolutely essential, for the greater good of the organization too, it’s not just about your team functioning. But focusing on pipeline really helps to sustain the organization’s success, it really does. Why do you think people avoid doing it?

Ren:

I think it’s that present bias.

Allison:

Yeah.

Ren:

And it kind of goes to the conversation around like, I think the next piece of our research is this idea of, if the pipeline’s important, then focus is the next shift. And we would, I think, boil it down to these 3 primary areas of focus. Like, how do you strengthen your pipeline? You help people identify areas of personal growth, you manage people and the work they need to get done. And you manage across the organization that kind of network. And I think the business goes too fast a lot of times, and so we don’t think about what we need to inform.

And some of the need for pipeline development or talent development strategy through this focus, is this question of, and you highlighted this a couple of times already, it’s like, what do people need and want now? That’s one question that we have to ask for development, I think. So the answer to your question, like why isn’t the pipeline strong? We’re not asking that question.

But then the other question we’re not asking is, what do you know that you need to be ready for?

Allison:

Yeah.

Ren:

And you just said that.

Allison:

Yeah.

Ren:

And then additionally, maybe most importantly, what do you need to be ready for that you don’t know about?

Allison:

Yes.

Ren:

And what is that next thing that is coming around the corner, that you have no idea. Because you should prepare for eventualities that could happen.

Allison:

Right.

Ren:

And then you should be preparing for eventualities that you don’t think could happen? Like, “Oh, that’ll never happen.”

Allison:

Yeah.

Ren:

I’d be like, “You need to be careful.”

Allison:

Right. Right, don’t say that.

Ren:

So I think all of that probably is in the cocktail. Yeah, definitely don’t say that, “That’ll never happen.” So I think that’s all in the cocktail of why people don’t do that. But I don’t know, why do you think people don’t fill the pipeline or don’t focus on those things, or what’s getting in the way?

Allison:

Well, sometimes I think people don’t know how, or they will see some companies who say, well, that’s HR’s job. And it’s part of their job, but it’s also a manager’s job to get to know their people. And if I can simplify it as much as I can for somebody who might be a mid-level manager, who’s not going to create strategy for this, who’s not going to create a talent development and capabilities strategy for the organization, getting to know your team’s goals is really important.

And that stays the same for people who … Some people are happy in their role and they want to stay there, they want to stay in that role. Some people have goals to be at the next level. That’s a really simple, in concept, place to start, because what I can say is, as a manager, “Hey Suzy, you want to be the VP of Ops or whatever, here’s where you are now and here’s where you need to be.” It’s like 2 plus 2 equals 4, you can look at job descriptions and start there and know people’s goals.

I think where some mid-level managers get hung up, is they don’t know how to do it, and they don’t know how to give feedback, or are afraid of it. We talked about this a little bit at the start, which was like, creating a culture that can allow for a pipeline. And same with the focus, which is the second step, to develop people, you have to have honest conversations with them, like the manager you mentioned, was always straight with you. So knowing somebody’s goals, and then being able to generate feedback conversations around that, is really important.

Ren:

Let’s chase that rabbit right now. Point 5 in the research is conversations.

Allison:

Yeah.

Ren:

And it’s so interesting, it’s like why don’t we talk more? And you ask the question, why isn’t the pipeline filled and why don’t we talk more? And again, I think this idea of one of these scariest false paradigms is, I don’t have the time. Which is realistic, because it connects to the third point in the research, was this idea of overload. How do I reach overloaded employees?

Allison:

Yeah.

Ren:

I think it starts with some conversations, where we have to have a real conversation with each other around what’s happening, what’s going on. But really, I think too, this idea of conversations rooted in candor and psychological safety and trust, those cultures of feedback yield better business outcomes.

And I think, sadly, we’re not equipped to have those conversations anymore. Like from childhood on upwards, from what I observed and even in my weaker states, do not really revel in conflict, don’t engage with conflict with people who have really oppositional views from me. I find myself in cocktail parties fiercely agreeing with one another, you know what I mean? Where we’re outraged around the same stuff.

And so I think there’s a muscle that can be built up in conversation, I think it starts with feedback. I think it starts too, with accountability. Like I let one of my teams down recently, and that sucked for them, and it sucked for us too. It wasn’t a good look, it wasn’t a good look for the org, it wasn’t a good look for me, and I just had to own that. And it reminds me of leadership disclosure. I had to tell people more about what was going on, my weak points, why they didn’t work, and ask for feedback.

And so I really vibe with the idea of like, as a manager or as anyone in the organization, feedback can help you get into that talent development space. And real conversations, honest conversations about growth, about failures, about limiting edges, that stuff makes a difference for talent development.

Allison:

Oh indeed. And it’s interesting you brought up conflict. Can you share more about conflict as it relates to these conversations?

Ren:

Like talent development conversations?

Allison:

Yeah, is that what you were saying? Like conflict in a talent development conversation?

Ren:

No, I was just saying more like generally, I think Americans don’t know how to have tough conversations with each other.

Allison:

Yes, yes.

Ren:

Because we’re like —

Allison:

That’s another podcast.

Ren:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think everyone finds themselves fiercely agreeing with people so much that when they meet someone in the opposite end of the spectrum, whatever spectrum it is, they start shouting at each other, because they finally have a chance to tell the other person on that other side, everything that’s wrong.

Allison:

Right.

Ren:

And I think too then, when you think about, well, that’s a value-based issue, then likely in someone’s talent development, that’s a value-based issue. Someone’s trying to develop their career or themselves, and then, it can get heated with a manager or a system that’s not developing it. And so we don’t talk about it, or we don’t talk about it effectively.

Allison:

Yeah. Yeah, that’s interesting. And I think talking about it effectively, the more you can just normalize having conversations about performance, the better. Which I know is easier said than done, depending on your organization.

But again, I always encourage people to remember that you can love your job and find purpose in your job, you also don’t have to, but you can find great joy and heart in your job, but also be objective about it and remember that your job is to do what’s on your job description. And it can be as objective as that, to look at your job description with your manager and say like, “Where am I doing well, where are my gaps?” Because it’s an agreement, “We’re going to hire you, Ren, to do these things here, we’ll let you know if there’s other things we need you to do. How are you doing? We hired you to do it. How’s it going?”

It can be that objective. So you can hold those 2 truths together at the same time, sometimes people get really hurt over critical feedback, when really, critical feedback can help you to grow, and it absolutely helps you to grow.

You’re also making me think, Ren, about psychological safety, which I know we’ve talked about ad nauseum, probably on these podcasts. But you have to find ways to engage people in a way that you can have those candid conversations that develop trust and growth. And when I think back to the sports analogies … or let me even take it a different way. If you were in a band, you would want to know if you were sharp or flat, right. Because it impacts the rest of the band, and it’s not a personal attack on you as a human. So finding ways that you can create alignment, that feedback is for the greater good.

Ren:

Yeah, that’s real growth mindset stuff. And I think, thinking with an abundance mindset too, there are no real failures, just a failure to learn from those things. And, too, in a talent development space, I think that makes sense, like you’ve got to create an appetite for failure. As we have the learning curve, where we know that we try a new thing, we’re doing really well, we plateau, we’re great, get a new task, and all of the sudden the performance dips, because we’re not as effective at it. And then we get better at it, then our performance lifts.

And I think, often, talent development doesn’t happen because in order to develop talent in spaces outside of one’s comfort zone, they’re going to have to get uncomfortable. And sometimes, when you’re uncomfortable, you don’t know what you don’t know, and you’re not performing that well.

And so I think there’s something to recognize, like, “Hey, A, take the feedback, ’cause wouldn’t you want to know? B, be willing to give the feedback. And then C, also create an environment where we’re more than our outcomes.” And something about the people-first kind of perspective that you said, I think connects to what I’d mentioned a little bit over, like this idea of overload. Where organizations struggle to develop an overloaded employee base.

Allison:

Yeah. 

Ren:

Where it’s like, “Hey, we have a development calendar, sign up for these learnings.” And people are like —

Allison:

Yeah.

Ren:

“I can’t, I have too much job.” Or worse yet, they mandate learning, the organization does, where they’re like, “Here, get developed, but also, don’t you dare underperform. You better work 2 jobs this week.”

Allison:

Yeah.

Ren:

And that’s super hard, the human element, I think, is something that needs to get managed. So the human element showing up in that space for feedback matters, like how you interact with someone, it’s not personal, but creating an environment of trust and safety. And then recognition too, that once you can see the human in the overloaded space, maybe you can do some different things with talent management.

Allison:

Yeah, that’s interesting, because you’re right, a lot of organizations will have opportunities for “talent development: “Come to this webinar, come to this speaker.” And they do invest time on that, and then can become frustrated when people don’t attend without digging into the why.

And if employees are overloaded in their roles and overwhelmed, it’s going to be hard for them to make those types of decisions. Even for thinking about the immediate future and their immediate growth and development, when they’re busy and overwhelmed, it’s just very, very hard to make time for that. As we know, the research finds, with employees and athletes and musicians and top performers across industries need breaks, and constant overload does not foster a growth mindset. In fact, it sets you up to make more mistakes and fail, so.

It’s just something to look at. Is there an easy answer to that? Probably not. But to your point, focusing on, or identifying, overload will help you to reach those busy and overloaded employees in a better way, just to be able to understand where they are.

Do you know what’s funny, is I once had, this was years ago, not at CCL, somebody I managed said, “Please don’t develop me. Please don’t focus on developing me.”

Ren:

That’s funny.

Allison:

And we laughed about it. He laughed, so I laughed and I was like, “Okay, what do you mean? Why?” And he said, “I’m so overwhelmed in my role right now that I’m just doing what I can to make sure I’m hitting all the objectives that I have to for this role specifically.” So, important to have those conversations.

Ren:

Yeah, it’s interesting. And you asked the question, like is there an easy answer? And I guess, I think our human-centered approach would be our answer at CCL. And I was looking up other perspectives on talent development too, saw this quote from Sean O’Hara, the Director of Accounting, Reporting, and Internal Controls at Nissan North America. So a nice, simple title for this guy. But he manages a team of over 140 people, pretty high in the organization. And his motto is, “People, quality, then profitability.” He doesn’t say, “then,” he says, “and profitability.”

And there’s something, I think the answer to the overload is, starting with the person. I think there’s other ideas to continue to build development into the jobs that people have to get done. Which is sort of what we talk about in the final idea of scaling this kind of talent development conversation. But I think it always grounds into people, and where we just left, it’s like safety too. The guy felt safe enough to tell you, “Hey, I don’t want development,” right. And that could be dangerous.

Allison:

Right.

Ren:

But then you were like, “Well, tell me more.” And he says, “I’m just trying to succeed in the job, I don’t have time.” What a candid and real conversation. So we start with that people part, and then we start to ask ourselves, how can we maintain the quality of our product while also trying to achieve your individual development goals? I think that’s the stuff that leads to profitability, versus people contributing and then leaving, so.

Allison:

Indeed.

Ren:

Yeah, yeah.

Allison:

Indeed. And I encourage managers to get away from the hero culture mentality too, which I already mentioned, but it is. Don’t be afraid to develop your “underperformers” that a lot of times cultures will punish instead of develop. And what I’m not saying is to ignore gross misconduct, that’s not what I’m talking about. But your folks who are struggling, it is your responsibility to help them and stop relying, holistically, on your heroes, because that drains everybody.

And one thing that we loosely mentioned, but haven’t named yet specifically, is that adaptability. So, Ren, you talked a lot already about being future oriented in mindsets, and it’s interesting to think about the mindset that is needed now. Again, just given some of the obstacles that a lot of organizations are facing. People just need to adapt how they’re working, and adapt their frame of reference and their frame of mind to be able to approach challenges in new ways. So again, I’m paraphrasing something you said a few minutes ago, which was, what is it that we don’t know? Like —

Ren:

Yeah.

Allison:

Getting into those conversations right now, like what are the things we don’t know? What should we do? Like how can we generate a conversation about that? So, expanding of mindset is not an easy thing to teach necessarily, if you lead a team. But there are ways you can ask the right questions and generate dialogue with your team just to think about challenges in a new way.

Ren:

Your example of developing your underperformers is such a great example. I think, probably, if any leader has some underperformers, it might even be triggering for you. You’d be like, “I don’t want to do that.”

Allison:

Yeah.

Ren:

And that might be the perfect sign of your need to change. Because I think you’re right, it’s like, the only guarantee I have for you is that change is coming.

Allison:

Yeah.

Ren:

And adaptability is required. Maybe shifting our perspectives, I think your example, again, maybe they’re underperformers because they don’t get developed. There might be —

Allison:

Yeah.

Ren:

Performance there, with time spent sharpening that saw.

Allison:

Right.

Ren:

Especially if other people are doing the job well. So yeah, I think that adaptability, the need to shift our looking, our mindset, I think, adapt how we’re adapting to execute business strategy. I think things that used to work don’t always need to keep working, and they’re worth observing. And I think people, too, really matters. We say in our research, “Effective leadership requires not just skills but also greater capacity. While growing leadership competencies is necessary and important, it’s no longer sufficient.” And I think that’s the root, when you and I talk vertical mindset or use our assessment, the Vertical Mindset Indicator, it’s not like adding another framework. It’s changing the way we use the information —

Allison:

Right.

Ren:

And looking at, or trying to seek new information, and use it and apply it in different ways, even future proofing.

Allison:

Yeah. And I like the question too, on that note, is, to consider whether you’re an organizational leader, C-suite executive, senior leader, or not, and this question can be considered by all types of leaders. Which is, what type of future are you building toward with your team? And sometimes that’s an easier question to start to generate ideas around, versus what are the challenges that are coming our way? Because sometimes we don’t know, and other times we get stuck on the challenge then, instead of what are we trying to achieve? What can we do? What are some of the actions we can take? So I like that question as a place to start, but you’re right, it can be complex, for sure.

I think we’ve touched on all of them so far. I’d love to get into a little bit more of talking about scale. So, what are some tips we can offer people to start to scale this kind of thing?

Ren:

Yeah, I think it’s hard to do this work across the org, and I think all of these things kind of build up to this point. One of the things that I think, we have these little takeaways in the research, these little blips of, ultimately I think scaling is rooted into the idea of developing the whole organization, not just your high pos, not just your execs. I said in the beginning, it’s like this idea of getting focused on your unique context. What is the organization trying to achieve? How do the people fit inside that? Tie people and development to the people, in the work that they’re doing, and then just starting to be honest about starting where you are, I think are ways to start to set the stage for this scale.

I mean, all of it starts to come into this environment, what is the functional environment that we have? Do we support development? What does support look like for development? How can we add development into the stuff that must be done? I think these are the conversations that we can start to have when an organization or leaders are interested in scaling some of that development.

Allison:

Yeah. And I think too, even adding to what you just said and focusing in on some tacticals, is that you can start by offering development opportunities for people. Again, keeping the story I had in mind, making sure that your people have the space for it and the appetite for it, but offering development opportunities where people can learn new skills. And that will be different, again, depending on the organization and the industry. But also, emphasizing learning as a benefit for everybody, and not being afraid to take the long way, knowing that it will sustain your organization.

Again, I think a lot of leaders just say, let’s press the easy button, “Ren, you’re really good at X, Y, Z, so we’re going to keep putting you on that.” Even though Susan over there really wants to be learning in that space, but we haven’t given her the opportunity just for sake of, like, easy button. So get away from the easy button. Understand what’s coming down the pipe, and understand your organization’s context too. Again, I know some of our listeners probably are responsible for strategy, some probably aren’t. And I think you can take action, really from wherever you are in the business.

Ren:

Hey, I was just reflecting on what you were just saying there, and some of the stuff we’re saying, and it’s going back to your question of the pipeline. Why isn’t the pipeline full, or why do we develop talent? I think we have to change our metrics, not to hit us —

Allison:

Agreed.

Ren:

With the deep philosophical conversation, as we do right when we close the door.

Allison:

Yeah.

Ren:

But I think it’s just this idea of, if a quarterly performance, if year over year numbers weren’t the only thing that indicated an organization’s success, then you could start to develop talent in the confines of the organization. Whereas, pipeline, succession planning, talent across the organization ready to do any job, as a success metric, then that could rise to the top, versus I think the truth of just publicly traded companies. Investors expect that their money is returned, and with interest.

Allison:

Yeah.

Ren:

And so I understand the organization’s standpoint, and any leader working inside of one who’s like, “Look, this is our prerogative. And it’s not even a personal challenge, it’s just like, if I don’t do this, then I don’t have a job, then you don’t have a job, then we don’t have a job.” And so I think there’s, in some places, there’s probably not much from a cultural, organizational, how do we look at talent as part of our win?

But maybe as that individual manager, there’s probably a couple of things you can do. Helping see people make sense of the development, trying to minimize the overload and burden, I think help them get developed in the confines of their own work so it doesn’t feel like it’s extra. I think really working with your people, I think some of the scaling factors probably are in the power of a few hands. But geez, I don’t think it’s easy in an environment where someone says the thing that matters is return on investment, therefore I can’t afford to develop my talent, even though it might hurt in the future, the pressure of today is just too much.

Allison:

Yeah. And I’d be really interested to know, gosh, I know we’re doing the doorknob thing. I’d be really interested to know what percent of publicly traded companies who are in the top, financially I mean, what percent of them have a talent development strategy or invest year over year. Like I’d be very curious to know those metrics, I’m sure I could probably … it’s got to be out there somewhere.

But again, you do have to know when your organization is ready for it. And if your organization is not ready to scale it, that does not mean that an individual leader has to prevent or not develop their team. And we talk about scaling, one of the metrics — or one of the things that we do, actually, here at CCL — is help organizations define what competencies they need at the organization. Which is a huge project, it’s a huge undertaking and can serve the organization pretty holistically once you get those nailed down. But it does take some time.

So scaling can look different, depending on the organization’s readiness, et cetera. And the culture, as you mentioned, and the culture. I mean, we have to be real, too. Gosh, do I even want to get into it, because now I feel like I’m going to just take us down a rabbit hole.

Ren:

I mean, we have a few more minutes.

Allison:

Yeah, you know —

Ren:

Say it.

Allison:

I know.

Ren:

It’ll be nice.

Allison:

Okay. Okay, it’ll be nice. So, we also have to be honest too about competition within organizations. We have to be honest about power structures. We have to be honest about leaders who intentionally prevent development, like those things happen too. So there’s a whole other conversation to be had around some of the behaviors that can prevent development, even if you do have a good strategy. I don’t want to leave us on that though, because that feels pretty heavy.

Ren:

Well, I think it’s perfectly reasonable, when we think about the complexities of all of this. It’s the tension between strategy and culture, and I think the old adage, strategy eats culture for breakfast, or culture eats strategy for breakfast. And I think, I don’t know, did I tell you that story about that strategy guy I was working with, and he said —

Allison:

I don’t know.

Ren:

We were having that conversation, and we have that picture of the elephant, which is culture eating the piece of bread, which is strategy. And we’re like, culture eats strategy. And he goes, “I’ve only ever heard HR people tell me that.” And it was very funny. I think I have told you that, because I think you had the exact same reaction. You’re like, “I don’t know. I may not agree, sir.” But I think it’s a polarity, where it’s like —

Allison:

Yeah.

Ren:

I mean, you could have the best plan in the world, but if you have people actively subverting it, or an institution that doesn’t incentivize the growth of other individuals, then it’s not necessarily going to vibe.

Allison:

Right.

Ren:

And I think that’s probably a good reminder of, whether or not you have the talent strategy, you’ve got to find an ebb and flow between the work that has to be done and how to develop between the tensions that exist around you and your goals or the people around you in their goals. And I think that something, too, that’s interesting about talent development, maybe one of our last thoughts or my last thoughts, is that it also comes down to the individual.

Allison:

Yes.

Ren:

No one is going to care about your goals more than you do, because they have their own goals. It’s weird like that, isn’t it? And so it’s not like no one doesn’t care about you, it’s that people wake up and they have their own stuff to take care of. And an organization may not look out for you first, because they might be publicly traded, or they might not be. But either way, there’s something about like, you as the individual just sussing out your own path, creating some energy around you if you’re able to, try to build some of that connection. So maybe scale starts with the individual.

Allison:

Yeah, I like that. And I have to tell you, so I’m sitting in front of my window, okay, I just need to give you this picture right now, this feels like a metaphor. There has been a hawk that’s been circling right outside the window this whole time.

Ren:

Yeah.

Allison:

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Ren, but it just passed again, it’s enormous and it’s been chasing off this little bird, that I sort of feel bad for. It just seems like there’s a metaphor in there somehow, with what you just said about your culture eats strategy story. But maybe that’s a reach, I don’t know.

Regardless, I like what you’re saying … there’s a responsibility for the employee, too, to take on their own development and communicate. There is, and your manager is your partner in that. It can be really helpful to think about your manager as a partnership for you to sort of help you to create a plan for your own development.

And again, it’s never going to hurt an organization to develop talent. Maybe you’ll fight me on that Ren, I don’t know, maybe that’s conversation for another time. But it can only help. It can only help the success of a business strategy to have a solid plan for developing talent at your organization.

Ren:

Yeah, I think someone could debate it, but I won’t. I agree with you, I think.

Allison:

Okay, thank you for that.

Ren:

I think it’s a boon, so I agree with you.

Allison:

Well, are there any last thoughts you want to leave for our listeners? What I’ll say first is that CCL has a really excellent research paper out on talent development that really outlines all of the steps that you can take, whether you’re an organizational leader or not, with some links to things like difficult conversations like Ren and I were talking about just now. So I would encourage you, if you are listening, to seek out that article and you can find it on the Google, if that’s the easiest way, and on our website. The title of that is, “Supporting Talent Development.” So you can find that. But in the meantime, Ren, any other tips you want to leave for our listeners?

Ren:

Just echo, I think, some of that adaptability. Just ready to future-proof yourself.

Allison:

Yeah.

Ren:

Some of talent development is preparing yourself for a future that you’re unsure about, that you’re always ready to flex, to be dynamic. I was just reading this idea of the 45 to 54 age gap, that space, is that, if you have to leave an org at 45, that age group is widely employed, but once they’re not, it’s incredibly hard for them to get a job. They experience more ageism than any other kind of working group. And so it’s just an interesting example, like even when you think that you’ve got your perfectly built career, everything’s all stable, you never know. And so just be ready, just be ready. And I think organizations, the same. And so develop, continue to develop.

Allison:

Yes, future-proof yourself. I like that as a tagline for you as an individual and for your organization.

So thanks for the conversation, Ren. For our listeners, you can find all of our podcast episodes and show notes on ccl.org. And check out our next episode, which will be likely this early fall, as we move to more of a quarterly cadence with our episodes.

In the meantime, find us on LinkedIn, let us know what you want us to talk about, let us know how your talent development is going. And to all of our CCL peers behind the scenes who make our podcast happen, a big thank you to all of you. And Ren, I’ll look forward to chatting with you next time.

Ren:

That’s right. Thanks Allison. Thanks everybody. See you in the fall. And find Allison on TikTok while you wait.

Learn More

| What to Explore Next

Talent Development Challenges for HR and L&D Leaders

How to Show Boss Support for Your Employees’ Development (& Why Boss Support Matters)

Building Leadership Capability: Overcoming Talent Development Challenges

| Related Solutions

Talent Development

Talent Conversations Training

The Strategic Leader Program

Sign Up for Newsletters

Don’t miss a single insight! Get our latest cutting-edge, research-based leadership content sent directly to your inbox.

Subscribe

The post Lead With That: Expanding Capabilities Through Talent Development appeared first on CCL.

“We want to be ready for the future, but don’t know how to prepare for what we can’t predict.”

As outlined in our new Talent Development Challenge Report, this is one of the quotes we hear most often from our clients. If your organization is like most, you’re keeping an eye on the headlines and thinking about the future, but preparing for the unknown feels impossible. You know bigger challenges are coming, and leaders and teams need to work together differently, but future-ready skills are difficult to identify — and harder still to develop.

Senior executives tell us they feel their leadership pipelines aren’t equipped to accomplish today’s priorities — much less tomorrow’s. The shortfall between current capabilities and forecasted leadership needs is called the leadership gap, and in today’s climate of instability and multiple interconnected crises, addressing it is more critical than ever. Steering the business through uncertainty requires not just leadership skills, but also building greater leadership capability — more sophisticated ways of thinking, increased perspective-taking, and leadership wisdom.

While you can’t prepare everyone for every scenario, you can help your leaders learn to think in bigger new ways. You need a protective scaffolding of development to elevate leaders across the board and secure your organization’s future. Join us to learn how building competencies and capabilities in a pipeline of adaptable leaders at every level is more straightforward than you might think — and more important now than ever.

What You’ll Learn

In this webinar, you’ll learn:

• How to identify gaps in your organization’s leadership pipeline
• Why vertical development is important for building leadership capability
• How a strong pipeline of leaders leads to organizational success

The post Building Leadership Capability: Overcoming Talent Development Challenges appeared first on CCL.